oh yeah, Marshall in is interviews is brutally honest and never gives a "coaches speak" answer. Its why he can rub certain people the wrong way. He always has the Us against the World mentality, but its that mentality that has made him one the top coaches in the nation and his teams play like it.

Leave it to that great American orator, Barry Hinson, to spell out what makes Wichita State such a good basketball team.

“I’ll tell you what they are,” the Southern Illinois coach said after his team’s 78-67 loss to the Shockers that was closer than the 11 points indicates. “They’re versatile. They remind me of a rover in softball because those guys can play any position. The thing that’s scary about them is that if one guy’s not scoring (Nick) Wiggins makes a three. If Wiggins doesn’t make one, (Ron) Baker does. Cleanthony (Early) goes off and gets points. (Tekele) Cotton scores a bunch off Northern Iowa. Every night they’ve got somebody different stepping up.”

But with Hinson, there’s always more. The coach who gave ESPN its programming for a week after an SIU loss at Murray State in December, showed the same passion when he was asked why the Shockers, despite being 26-0, are viewed with such skepticism nationally.

Here we go.

“Oh, you want to go that route,” Hinson said. “Here’s what I’m going to say about that. If Wichita State loses a game and they just don’t drop them one spot in the poll and still give them a No. 1 seed, then I’m going to be really upset.

“Arizona loses one and only drops one spot. Well, you better give that same respect to Wichita State if they lose. You better give that same respect to our league. I don’t want to see that and I’m tired of sitting here … I don’t give a flip about bracketology. But I hear Wichita State’s not a No. 1 seed? What more can they do? What do you want to do, beat people worse than they’re beating them? Gregg (Marshall) is sharing minutes. They’re undefeated. I mean, good gracious.

“That’s one of the top two teams in the country right now. How in the world can they not be a No. 1 seed even if they lose a game.”

It was at this point that the pitch in Hinson’s voice had reached a level only a voice coach could recognize.

And he continued.

“I’m fired up for the Shockers. I’m fired up for the Missouri Valley Conference. It’s a burr in my saddle when people talk like that because let me tell you something … if Texas is 26-0 and they get beat, they’re still talking about them being a No. 1 seed. Why can’t it be the same for Wichita State?”

That’s vintage Hinson. There’s no one who loves the Valley more. In what has been a difficult year for the conference, who else but Hinson is able to summon that kind of passion and vitriol for his league and his league’s best team?

Now, he would have loved for the Salukis to have been the team to have tested his hypothesis about a one-loss Shocker team. And SIU came close. It’s a much better team than when the two met in Carbondale in early January and if the Salukis had done better than 14 of 24 from the free-throw line, we might be talking about that first loss.

“I thought Wichita State was beatable tonight,” Hinson said. “I do think we let an opportunity get away.”

The Shockers muddled through the first half with starting guards Ron Baker and Fred VanVleet spending significant time on the bench with two fouls. They really never played at a high level, although WSU scored 46 second-half points.

But SIU shot 47.1 percent, which irks Marshall, the Shockers’ coach. The undersized Salukis stayed with WSU on the boards, losing that battle by only three. Wichita State got by on being a better team, not necessarily playing like a better team.

“That was probably a C-minus for us,” Marshall said. “At best. But Southern Illinois gets a lot of the credit for that.”

The national college basketball pundits are sure to swish this one around in their mouths for a while and come to whatever determination they come to. Because of the Valley’s perception, which is more real than its spokesman, Hinson, would admit, it’s difficult to evaluate the Shockers.

But 26-0 stands up well to any review. It’s tough to scrutinize unbeaten and Wichita State has always had a way, under Marshall, to figure out how to win games that look to be in jeopardy. It’s how they’re coached.

WICHITA — Wichita State’s encore performance from its Final Four splash a year ago is at 26-0 and accelerating after it fended off Southern Illinois 78-67on Tuesday at Koch Arena.
Travis Heying | AP

The Shockers are ranked second in the coaches’ poll and fourth by The Associated Press. Just as surely as they meet the eye test, they stand up to cold analysis at fourth in the most recent NCAA RPI.

And now they’re five games away from being the first major-college team in a decade to enter the postseason unscathed.

Yet for all that, Wichita State is in a curious perception vacuum right now even amid a world of instant and constant analysis.

How good are the Shockers, really, many seem to wonder … even with a core of players back from last year that should confer automatic credibility and makes this year’s version capable of making a deep NCAA dent.

Instead, if they had lost to Southern Illinois, and they could have, the Shockers surely would have been dramatically downgraded in the polls.

They’re underappreciated for reasons they can’t control but that have little to do with their caliber of play.

In part, it’s because it’s otherwise been a tepid year among its Missouri Valley brethren.

In part, it’s because Wichita State isn’t a brand name in the game and it’s largely made up of players who were overshadowed as prospects … as symbolized by Nick Wiggins being a Shocker senior reserve whose younger brother Andrew is expected to be a top NBA draft pick after one season at Kansas.

Whatever the reasons, it shows up like this: If the Shockers are less than flawless in any given game, well, then, how good can they really be?

It’s easy to fall into that, all the more so because they’re undefeated and thus more subject to scrutiny.

Watching them grinding before pulling away late against the Salukis, who had won four in a row but were 6-15 before that, provided plenty of room for skepticism about their trajectory.

But those relentless evaluations, none of which mean a thing until season’s end, miss the point.

There were plenty of other reasons that could go into a sluggish game like this at a time like this for the Shockers.

Maybe they were tight? Could they be getting bored? Might they have been due for a letdown, especially after winning back-to-back road games last week, including at their top Valley competitor, Indiana State? Doesn’t SIU get some credit for its improvement?

Most likely, it was some form of all of that at once.

In one sense, the result left coach Gregg Marshall somewhere between grim and glum as he assessed the game afterward:

“Just survived,” he said. “A C-minus,” he called it.

But that doesn’t mean Marshall suddenly is fretting over his team. He understands the larger scheme, and he believes his team is mature.

In particular, he believe it’s embracing being one of only two remaining undefeated teams instead of feeling any heaviness or distraction from it.

His players, he said, have subscribed in a general sense to what actress and Wichita native Kirstie Alley told them before the game Tuesday.

“ ‘Don’t read your reviews, the positive ones and the negative ones; go out and play your game,’ ” he quoted her saying. “So you’re getting it from a Hollywood star who knows sometimes you can read too much of what you guys write.

With a smile, he added, “Not that you’re not great writers.”

Much as he’d like it to continue, Marshall knows this isn’t about an undefeated regular season. Ultimately, that would be a fine distinction.

But this is all about girding for the NCAA Tournament, which the Shockers entered last season without even being ranked only to burst through to the Final Four for the first time since 1965.

It’s about getting better as they go and not stagnating or thinking that an unblemished record means they’re playing untarnished basketball.

“Hopefully, we’ll play better than this against Evansville, or it will be over Sunday,” Marshall said.

Most of all, he knows this:

In the rhythm of a 35-game season, maybe 25 games a team plays are “basically you.” Five or so might go a little better, he said, five or so not as good.

And so to date, he added, “You’re not going to play the perfect game 26 times.”

That doesn’t mean the Shockers don’t have a high ceiling or that there’s anything wrong.

But as far as others see them, they’re in limbo now until the NCAA Tournament, which whether or not they have a pristine regular season is what their ultimate signature will be.